


The winter does not leave without a backward glance

by islasands



Series: Lambski [57]
Category: Adam Lambert (Musician)
Genre: M/M, doubts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-24
Updated: 2012-05-24
Packaged: 2017-11-05 22:30:32
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,397
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/411701
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/islasands/pseuds/islasands
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The warmth of love is mostly wonderful, but occasionally, for some unaccountable reason, it can make you miss the cold....</p><p>The song is "How to Disappear Completely" by Radiohead. You may like to listen while you read.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The winter does not leave without a backward glance

"How to Disappear Completely"

  


Radiohead

  


His lover’s face suddenly filled the screen and it jolted him in the same way that a memory does when it surfaces out of nowhere, prompted by certain words, smells, or the arrival of the sound of rain. And it had the same effect as a memory. “I remember you,” was his thought and he frowned, vaguely aware that this was the wrong thought to be having. After all, his lover was skypeing him from the home they shared. On the wall behind him he could see the painting they had chosen together and he knew that the light picking up the metallic gold and silver of his hair was from a lamp he always switched off before they went to bed. Even greater proof of the immediacy of their relations was how well he knew the clothes his love was wearing, - garments he had recently furiously removed, article by article, in the agitation of being reunited after a long separation. And then there was his face. Those blue eyes looking out of the screen, so crystalline in their pragmatism, looked exactly the same as when they had looked up at him from a pillow in their shared bed, – how long ago? Two, three weeks? And that voice currently greeting him with a smile was using endearments peculiar to their love. Their current living love. Yet his thought, when the face of his nearest and dearest had flooded the screen, had been, “I remember you.” Why? Why was he remembering unless he was beginning to forget.

He closed the lap top. He remained sitting on the bed, hands on his knees. He turned them palm up and looked at the nothing they were holding. He let himself fall straight back on the bed. He stared at the ceiling. He slid one hand down his pants and held onto himself. The familiarity of his touch reminded him of his lover’s touch. He turned his face to one side.

What else do I remember, he thought. He relaxed his mind and let images float by on the screen of his mind’s eye. Random images of family, friends and crowds of strangers appeared and scrolled out of view, accompanied by animals and birds, -some wild, some domesticated - and they were all walking to the left… Well, walking wasn’t the right word. It was more like they were on a conveyor belt, slowly and steadily going somewhere, faces forward, while behind them a living backdrop of scenery took place, train fashion. Oceans, rivers, trees, houses, cities, towns flowed past, and occasionally, oddly, he also had glimpses into the interior of rooms he had once occupied, tables he had sat at, beds he had slept in, bodies he had handled. “The conveyor belt of my life”, he thought, a recognition that caused the vision to instantly disappear after the manner of a spell being broken. Now all his mind’s eye could see was an endless sea of green, perhaps it was corn, a blue sky, and running through the green a narrow red road that divided the scene neatly in half. “That’s from a movie”, he thought. He let the image linger. A person suddenly entered the frame and began walking down the road. Sauli. He watched as Sauli walked on and on up the straight road, watching until he became small and dark like an insect.

Adam opened his eyes. He checked the time on his phone. He had a couple of meetings to get through before going out to dinner with his friends. And then on to soundcheck and after the show maybe they’d go to a club. He thought about an attractive guy who had propositioned him at a bar a few nights ago. He hadn’t been tempted but it had been a pleasurable and mutual flirtation. Well, that’s not entirely true, he thought. He _had_ been tempted, but not by the idea of sex. It was the idea of re-entering the world of chance encounters, of being back in the cold climate of not having a boyfriend, or if he did, of having one he knew, deep down, and had known from the get go, was not going to be a stayer. He missed being chilled to the bone with loneliness. He missed warming himself at fires he lit in the dark, fires that were pretty by night, ugly in the light of morning. He missed the autopilot of that searching. It had run his life for years. It had been there in the mirror, looking back at him when he was scanning himself for the good and bad points of his face and physique. It had been there when he was confidently working over a lover, or confidently working over a crowd. It had been there when he was in the quiet bosom of family and friends, and there when he left the stage to the din of strangers’ applause. Hah. The depressing power of person hunger. “The most ecstatic form of being pissed off that there is,” he thought.

He went back to the bed and skyped Sauli again.

“Do you love me?” he said as soon as Sauli picked up the skype. Sauli frowned at him.

“I do,” he said.

“How much?” Adam said.

Sauli looked down as he held out his hands. He moved them slowly outward until they disappeared off the screen. Then he slowly brought them back together until their palms met. He looked back up.

Adam pulled a face. “That’s not a lot,” he said.

Sauli dropped his hands. “If I could measure love.” He paused, looking for his best English. “If I could do that I would have magic power. And I don’t. Why do you ask?”

“I wish I was inside you.” Adam pushed his lips forward. “I’m cold. I miss you.”

Sauli smiled. “No you don’t.” He shrugged. “Maybe you miss someone, but not me.”

“I don’t miss anyone but you. Don’t be silly.”

“Silmistä sielu paistaa.” Sauli leaned forward into the screen. “I see your soul eyes,” he said. “And it is not me you are asking to measure love. It is yourself. How much do _you_ love? It is a winter day in your eyes even though it is spring.”

Adam's mouth went down on one side. "What would you know, my little seer." 

"We have a saying. The winter does not leave without a backward glance." Sauli rested his chin on his hands. "Talvi ei lähde vilkaisematta taakseen," he added. His expression was affectionately distant. 

Adam snorted lightly. He stared at Sauli’s face, the angles of his jaw, the planes delineated by his cheekbones, the hollows in which his eyes were set like sun bleached jewels. It was like taking in the contours of a mountain. He smiled, shaking his head. He made a “hmm” noise of disbelief. He held up the laptop so that he could lean in and squash his nose against Sauli’s nose on the screen.

He drew back and wiped the screen with the back of his sleeve.

“You think you know me and you’re the boss of me,” he said, almost placing his fingertip on Sauli’s virtual lips. “But you’re not.”

They both smiled as the sun of that particular untruth shone warmly, indulgently, humourously, into their hearts. They went on to say their goodbyes with a good deal of reluctance and tender feeling.

Adam went into the bathroom for one last check. He touched up his hair. “I am, in fact, quite incredibly handsome,” he thought to himself. He smiled a wry smile at his reflection. With that thought in mind he swanned out of the hotel room, swanned into the lift, and swanned out into the foyer where the band and his road crew were waiting. As he chit-chatted and joked he became aware that his inner man, the one Sauli claimed to know and see, was running up the red clay road of his earlier imagination. “Wait up,” his inner man was calling, and Sauli, turning back to look at him, was stopping and was waiting for him. Imagining this, he grinned to himself. He went on to the sound check where he was his usual polite, picky and demanding self.

The concert review pundits all agreed that his performance that night had been remarkable. He was on fire, they all said. 


End file.
